Women Seen As Objects

Just open a magazine and turn to a perfume advertisement. Mostly you not only see a nice bottle of perfume, but you get to see a girl with minimal clothing advertising perfume. Also when you turn on the television you get to see girls in bikinis talking about medicine. Go on the Internet and look at what celebrities are wearing. The place women fulfill in the society is a question that arise along lot of people. around 40% of the woman in America have had a feeling like they were seen as a object once. The feeling like they need to change there identity to be seen as their selves is something that arises.

Studies

Two studies, one in Belgian and the other American are proving that women really are perceived as (sex) objects. An experiment was taken by a psychologist Phillippe Bernardt. He found out that women in lingerie on photographs were perceived more as objects than as people. Although this was not the case with men in underwear.

Experiment

For the experiment, 78 subject were shown to several people, photos of men and women wearing underwear or bathing-suits. After showing the pictures they made an adjustment on a few photos and showed them for the second time to the same people. Then they asked which one they had originally seen the first time and came back the second time.

Proof

The people had more trouble with recognizing the pictures of men but the pictures of women they all recognized.

Not only men see women as objects, women perceive other women in exactly the same way. Men do it because they are checking out a potential partner, while women are looking at the competition by comparing themselves to the other woman.

Reaction of the fashion world

Barbie Dolls

Giampaolo Sgura made real Barbie dolls from the models Magdalena Frackowiak and Elisabeth Erm. He did this project in instruction of the Vogue Paris were he also put the models in associated boxes. The italian photographer designed a different box for each fashion house.

People think that this shoot was meant as critic on the place that women fulfill in the society nowadays. This shoot seems to express that woman and in particularly models are regally seen as a (sex) object. In this case as Barbie dolls. The photographer himself doesn’t share his opinion and says that everybody is free to have their own opinion about what they think of the shoot. I think it is good that people can find their own opinion about this shoot. It let people think about topics that arise in our world. We see in the critic that Giampaolo Sgura got about the place of woman in our society.